Managing the Challenge: How Ready Are You? (Cont'd)

Rules embedded in policy, protect service provider control, and ensure customer satisfaction by taking into account granular subscriber profile details. For example, a service provider employing distance-sensitive DSL access network equipment may have some subscribers able to receive X amount of bandwidth while other more distant subscribers top out at less than X. In this case, rules can be written into policy to reject requests for high-bandwidth applications that simply can’t be delivered to a specific subscriber based on distance from the central office. In this case, they could then be directed to a portal page that offers alternative services.

Network Independence
As leading network operators worldwide prepare for fixed/mobile convergence, the single point of entry offered by IP service convergence — including subscriber and applications profiles — will need to operate regardless of the fixed or mobile access network used by the subscriber.

Subscriber-centric policy management paves the way for this network independence because it constitutes a management layer decoupled from specific broadband network elements. The same subscriber profile, application profile and policy servers applied to a cable network, for example, can also be applied to a Wi-Fi, WiMAX or mobile network.

The 3GPP Group’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture puts policy very much at its center in the form of what it has defined as the Home Subscriber Server (HSS). The HSS is designed to leverage user subscriber profiles to apply policies to the network and to support the network operator’s subscriber authorization, service provisioning, billing and other operations necessary to monetizing usage of converged IP networks.

Because the HSS model prescribes a single repository for user profiles relating to applications and network access, it delivers a single point of user management and provisioning to control a subscriber's ability to access applications. It also allows the tailoring of application experience on a subscriber by subscriber basis.

The fixed broadband service provider implementing subscriber-centric policy management today also positions itself to extend subscriber control across wireless networks, laying the groundwork for offering each subscriber network-independent access to applications. This can range from desktop PC to portable laptop or from home IP phone to mobile handset, or MP3 music player.

Dynamic Management for Dynamic Networks, Subscribers and Services
Convergence of networked applications over IP creates new opportunities for converged intelligence about subscribers, applications and network resources. Once this intelligence is centralized, service providers gain a new level of control over network resources consumed by each subscriber and each application.

Subscriber-centric policy management enables service providers to exploit these opportunities, rapidly creating new revenue sources while minimizing the costs of managing increasingly complex infrastructure.

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